restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations
The Tragedy of Secular Education
The fact that state education is compulsory in America is no argument that it is legitimate. Indeed, the church must be extremely jealous of any attempt on the part of the state to take control of any aspect of the work of religious education.
Yet that is just what is happening in America. The entire weight of state-controlled education is molding the child to believe that the church and its message are unessential to the complete or normal life of an American citizen. No academic skepticism, no secularistic authors, no blatant materialism can so undermine the spiritual life of the country like the completely secularized training of the child under the authority of the state.
If and when the weight of the state is thrown against the Christian faith, the state has become the enemy of the faith and disaster lies ahead. The state, for the sake of its own legitimate functions, must recognize that national life is not conserved but destroyed if the policy of the state as a wholly secularized mode of education is to undermine the authority of the church.
State schools dare not teach the spirit of the Constitution as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. They dare not teach it because it says that all men, not just the majority, are endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Again, state schools dare not teach that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed. Instead, they teach the outmoded philosophy of the divine right of kings, only now they call it the divine right of the majority. State schools have to completely repudiate the ideals of the American way of life. They dare not teach the meaning of liberty. They dare not teach the meaning of the Golden Rule. They dare not teach youth that the ideal form of governmentthe only form of government that can be of value to mankindis one that is limits the power of politicians by the chains of the Constitution, as Thomas Jefferson once put it.
The best solution to Americas education fiasco will be to get the federal government out of our classrooms entirely, to repeal all federal meddling, and to let local communities (or, better yet, individual families) educate their children as they see fit. In the U.S. Constitutions careful enumeration of its powers and responsibilities (Article 1, Section 8), there is no mention of education. Yet the Department of Education and the teachers unions have ruined our nations schools, and everyone knows it. Isnt it time to take back our schools and start a new American Revolution?
May 7, 2003
David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.